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Aug 22, 2009

It looks like we have a couple of months to kill these Ration-N-Tax Schemes of Penny Wong and Malcolm Turnbull.

In a lifetime of observing, commenting on and participating in the Australian political process, I have never seen such bi-partisan parliamentary support for such destructive and baseless nonsense. Nor have I even seen such craven or avaricious behavior from most business leaders. This is not going to end well.

As usual, it is the minorities and a few brave politicians and journalists who first recognize the danger and who start the public opposition. We must encourage and support this.

We appreciate the support we are getting from all of you. Our numbers are growing steadily, and our web site gets many appreciative comments from ordinary people.

“But we have moved on from the year 2000. To get back to 90% of 2000 would require a 20% cut on today’s activities. Moreover, the population by 2020 will be at least 30% above that in 2000. So the Turnbull carbon cuts will need to be more than 33% per capita.

“Emissions are produced by everything we do – if we use electricity, steel, cement, timber, cars, trucks, planes, ships, trains or food from farms, we will always produce emissions. Even people sleeping on the beach burn carbon food energy and emit carbon dioxide. How is each Australian going to trim carbon usage by 33%?

“2020 is just a decade away. There is no chance that wind, solar, geothermal or carbon burial will overcome their technical, engineering, infrastructure, environmental, transmission, economic and stability problems quickly enough to generate significant quantities of emissions-free base load electricity in that time.

“That leaves only three ways to achieve the Turnbull cuts – the Green Option, the Secret Plan or the Unspeakable Option.

“The Green Option requires less use of modern technology - a return to candles and chip heaters, wood stoves and wind pumps, charcoal burners and steam engines, sulkies and bicycles, horse power and sailing clippers, possum stew and kangaroo tail soup, mud bricks, shingle roofs and cement floors made from ant bed and cow manure. Some things will disappear unless Malcolm has plans for airships lifted by political hot air, for night-time power generated from moonbeams using lunar panels, or for vegie-steak produced from algae growing in backyard ponds of poo.

“Reducing population will definitely achieve cuts in emissions without cuts in living standards. Is that the Secret Plan?

“Or of course we always have the Unspeakable Option – a crash program to build nuclear power plants in the Latrobe, the Hunter, the Barossa, the Fitzroy and the Pilbara.

“Compared to these options, maybe a bit more harmless carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is not so bad after all?

Mr Forbes is Chairman of the Carbon Sense Coalition, based in Australia, a rapidly growing organisation of scientists, engineers and voters concerned at the baseless and senseless demonization of the harmless plant food, carbon dioxide.